


As it was

by Rosaliss



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alchemy, Alternate Universe, Death, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Necromancy, Other Characters Are Mentioned, Vague setting, alchemist!Remus, and a bit of blood, but there is a corpse you know, not gory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-16 08:07:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29204079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosaliss/pseuds/Rosaliss
Summary: It's raining hard when Sirius knocks on the door of Remus Lupin, alchemist. His request is a peculiar one: he's heard that Remus studies necromancy, a difficult and illegal practice, and Sirius wants him to perform a resurrection for him. Remus refuses, but Sirius doesn't give up: his brother is dead, and he's willing to do whatever it takes to bring him back.
Relationships: Sirius Black & Regulus Black, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 8
Kudos: 38
Collections: RS Fireside Tales Vol.3





	As it was

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to thank the mods for organising such a lovely fest, as well as my friends, who supported me and virtually held my hand while I complained about writing!
> 
> Prompt was the image below. [ID: A shelf with old-looking phials, jars, and bottles, all of them made of glass, of different colours and sizes, with labels on them. End ID]

It was raining hard when Sirius knocked on Remus’s door. His coat was drenched and rested heavy on his shoulders, the weight of the water making it difficult to walk. His nice, black shoes and tailored trousers were splattered with mud, a fact about which he wouldn’t have cared on a normal day–not as of late, at least–, but that rendered his plans of making a good first impression as a respectable man ultimately unfeasible. The innkeeper he’d met on his way had tried to dissuade him, probably to get him at one of her tables with a bill addressed to her, perhaps even a bed booked for the night. Leaning on the doorframe, arms crossed and a sly smile, she’d watched him advance in the heavy pour before calling to him: an amused “Where are you going?”, to which Sirius had replied, “To the alchemist.” She’d laughed and shaken her head, telling him to get inside and think about the alchemist–and what a weird tone she’d used to say the name–on a less wet day. Standing at the alchemist’s door, soaked through and with a grumbling stomach, Sirius half wished he’d taken her advice and a seat in her tavern, but he’d travelled for so long that he couldn’t wait any longer to see the man and get his answers.

So he knocked, suddenly hyper-aware of his dark surroundings, of the moon high in the night sky, hidden behind the grey clouds, and the fact that supper had been long gone for a while, now. The alchemist might not answer the door or, worse, he might do so to insult him and send him away. So long for the respectable man he wanted to come across as.

Sirius heard a rustle from the other side just as he was thinking of giving up. A face peered from the half-open door–a flash of green eyes looking him up and down–before the door opened all the way through.

“Please, come in,” the man said, stepping aside to let Sirius in. “Take off your coat. You must be freezing.”

Sirius hadn’t noticed he was chattering his teeth before the man’s comment. Now that he was inside, out of the cold dark of the rainy evening, he felt every shiver run down his spine. He shrugged the coat off his shoulders and let the man lead him to another room, brighter than the one they’d been in and with a warm fire crackling in the fireplace. He sat down on a couch in front of it, thanking whatever god might be above for the heat of the fire and the kindness of the man he supposed was the much-sought alchemist. In the lit room, Sirius saw that he was about his age: even if the grey scattered through his light-brown hair might suggest otherwise, his face still possessed a certain quality that spoke of youth. He was tall, but his figure appeared frail under the many woolly layers he was wearing. There was a long scar, too big to be ignored, connecting his right cheekbone to the base of his neck in a tortuous path. His lips were thin and bent in a grimace that made his mouth look like another scar on his face.

He spoke again, “Are you a traveller? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you around here.”

“I am,” Sirius answered.

“There is a village not far from my house–nothing much, but enough to accommodate the needs of an unfortunate traveller caught in the rain. Perhaps you saw its outline or lights from here. No matter; I hope my fireplace is good enough for you.”

“It’s perfect,” Sirius said honestly, shivering again.

His host scowled, deepening his mouth’s grimace. “I’ll go fetch you a blanket before you catch a cold.”

He disappeared behind another door, leaving Sirius alone. Giving a look around, he realised that the room had nothing to do with what he’d imagined the house of an alchemist would look like and felt quite foolish. Of course the man needed a room like that one, with soft couches and armchairs and pretty paintings framed on the walls, regardless of his profession.

“What’s your name, anyway?” asked the man, walking back to the couch to hand Sirius a patchwork blanket. He didn’t sit down next to him, instead going to stand by the fireplace.

“Sirius Black,” Sirius said. He wrapped the blanket around his body and sighed at the added warmth. “And you’re Remus Lupin, I suppose.”

He frowned. “You know who I am?”

Sirius tried to morph his lips into what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “You’re not wrong when you say that I am a traveller caught in the rain, but I wasn’t far from my mark when it happened,” he said, not mentioning that he hadn’t been close to it, either. “I was looking for you. As a customer.”

Remus looked at him with a puzzled expression on his face and then let out a short snort. “What kind of service cannot wait until tomorrow?”

“You’re an alchemist.”

The scowl on his face grew. “I am,” he said, crossing his arms. “And what do you need an alchemist for?”

Sirius cleared his voice in an attempt to shake off the cold and resume the professional air a formal offer required. Remus was watching him expectantly. He had his back to the fireplace in a way that made it hard for Sirius to see his eyes clearly. “I’ve been informed by trustworthy sources that your alchemic studies have brought you to more than elixirs of life. I hear that you don’t need to find a way to prevent a person from dying, because you can bring them back.”

“Your sources aren’t that trustworthy if this is what they told you,” Remus said without so much as batting an eyelid. “I do not raise the dead.”

“You said it yourself, you’re an alchemist. I know that you are a necromancer, as well.”

“My mentor taught me alchemy and some aspects of more occultist studies. That doesn’t make me a necromancer, as you say.”

“I can give you money,” Sirius offered. “A great deal of money.”

“Don’t you know that necromancy’s illegal?”

“If it’s discretion you’re concerned about…”

“I couldn’t care less about your discretion. I won’t do it. Ask me anything else. Ask me to try and transmute lead into gold, if you want to make things difficult for me, but do not ask me to mess with the dead.”

“You don’t understand,” Sirius said, almost pleading. A deep intake of breath, and there it was, the scary truth: “My brother’s dead.”

“I’m sorry,” Remus said. “But I don’t make exceptions. Now, you can rest by the fireplace for a while, if you’d like; warm up, wait for the rain to pass. When the storm goes away, so will you.”

He kept his word. As soon as the rain calmed down, Remus escorted him to the door. It was late in the evening, at that point, the world still dark around them with no trace of the stars to offer some kind of guidance. Remus took a look at the sky, went back inside and returned a moment later with a lantern. “So you don’t get lost,” he said, handing it to Sirius. He tried to thank him, but Remus didn’t show any sign he’d even heard him, so Sirius simply took the lantern and went his way. A few light drops were still falling on his still wet hair, but he barely felt them. Remus’s house was outside the village, and Sirius felt grateful to whoever had built a path connecting the two.

Wrapping himself tightly in his coat, lantern in hand, he found his way back to the main road. When he arrived outside the tavern, he glanced inside from one of the windows at the small crowd still at the tables–drunken men, mostly, whose loud laughter could be heard from the street–and stepped inside. The same young woman from before raised her head from where she was wiping the counter and smiled.

“So, did you see the alchemist?” she asked when Sirius was in front of her. 

“Do you happen to have an empty room where I could stay?”

To her credit, she didn’t ask any more questions about Remus or his general situation. “I do,” she said, leaving the cloth on the counter and picking up a candle from a nearby table. “Follow me.”

She led him up a wooden staircase to a floor composed of a dark corridor and a few doors. She opened the first one to her right and gestured for him to get inside. The room itself was dim, lit only by the candle in the innkeeper’s hand. It was fairly small and simply decorated, only a bed with a nightstand by its side, a wardrobe, and a bureau with nothing on it, all of the same shade of woody brown. The blanket on the mattress looked warm and comfortable, though, and its colour was that rich red Sirius would often see behind a boutique’s window. There was a small painting hanging above the bureau, some vague landscape that Sirius didn’t pay too much attention to.

“It’s perfect, thank you,” he said.

“Call me if you need anything,” the innkeeper said. Her smile was less mischievous than the one she’d had earlier in the evening, or just a few moments before, when he’d entered the inn. Her eyes, in the candlelight’s glow, were almost kind.

“Actually, if you could bring me something to eat…”

“Sure. I’ll get you something warm, you look like you need it.”

Sirius took off his coat and sat down at the bureau, avoiding the bed in fear of falling asleep immediately. Every bone in his body felt as if it’d been replaced by a copy made of stone, and he still had goosebumps from the outside cold. His hunger had reached the point where it was starting to be painful, and his stomach gave a loud grumble when the innkeeper showed up with a bowl of soup and a loaf of bread. She laid them in front of him together with a generous cup of wine.

“This should do the trick,” she uttered with a pleased smile. “Goodnight...” she let the sentence hang in the air, and Sirius took the hint.

“Sirius Black,” he said.

“Marlene McKinnon.”

“Thank you, Marlene.”

Only once she’d closed the door behind her, tired and alone before his steaming bowl of soup, did Sirius burst into tears.

*

The morning after Regulus’s death had found Sirius sprawled on James and Lily’s sofa, a blanket tucked under his chin and an empty bottle of wine knocked over by the side of the sofa; a few forgotten drops had spilt out of its neck, leaving a couple of red stains on the otherwise immaculate floor. He’d woken up with an awful headache and soreness in every limb of his body. The memory of his brother and the hangover nausea had arrived at the same time, and Sirius had rushed to grab the bucket kindly left at the foot of the sofa and emptied his stomach.

The morning after the encounter with Remus was kinder to Sirius’s stomach but not his head, pulsing with a devious ache after his meltdown. He opened his eyes and took a deep breath, letting the familiar weight settle down on his chest. He got out of bed despite it, revelling in the grounding cool of the floor as he took care of the hygienic matters of starting the day. They were nothing more than a series of mechanical acts, but they had been so hard in the days that had followed Regulus’s death. Sirius owed so much to James and Lily; without them, he would’ve probably forgotten to eat and clean himself, or even fallen into the river while walking around drunk. His hands still itched for the bottle to lift some of the weight off his shoulders, but drinking himself into a stupor wouldn’t have helped Regulus. He’d told himself as much, one day that he’d felt more angry than sad, and he’d shoved some clothes and a fair amount of money into a travelling bag, hugged James tight, kissed Lily on the cheek and left. Now he put on some of those same clothes, the coat from the night before, and he went downstairs, where Marlene was serving a customer.

“Good morning,” Sirius greeted her.

“Good morning,” she said back. “Go find a table of your liking, if you want to eat breakfast. I’ll be there in a moment.”

He settled in a small table in one of the corners, back to the wall. Marlene joined him briefly, tray in hand.

“You’re up earlier than I expected,” she said, without explaining why she’d thought so. “I hope everything is all right.”

“It is,” Sirius said. He reached for his bag and pulled out a few coins. “I’m afraid I cannot tell you how long I’ll stay here, but here’s a down payment.”

“Thank you.” She let the coins slip inside her skirt’s pocket. “As for the breakfast–”

“Bring me whatever you have,” Sirius said, “as long as it’s not too much. I want to head out as soon as possible.”

He expected her to leave, but when he raised his head she was still there.

“Please forgive my indiscretion, I know I’m overstepping my boundaries here, but…” Marlene hesitated, then continued, “From what I understood last night, your meeting with the alchemist didn’t go well, but now you’re saying that you’ll be here for a while still, and I wondered…” She didn’t finish the sentence.

“Well, surely I don’t look like the kind of person that gives up so easily, do I?” Sirius said, flashing a smile that looked more confident and charming than he felt. Marlene must have deemed it good enough, though, because she didn’t inquire further.

Sirius ate his breakfast quickly, bid Marlene farewell with a tilt of his head and took his leave.

Not many people animated the village, too small for the heated activity Sirius had grown accustomed to during his stay in the capital. He followed the path from the previous day and soon found himself in the open countryside, heading towards the alchemist’s house.

He’d met other alchemists before in his life, despite never having developed an interest in the subject himself. The first one was a boy from the boarding school Sirius parents had sent him to, a certain Fenwick with whom Sirius had shared nothing more than an acquaintanceship. He knew that he was studying alchemy and even had a couple of superficial conversations about his interest with him, but never cared enough to find out more. Emmeline Vance had been the second. They’d met through Lily, with whom she was friends, and spent an entire evening chatting about politics and the evolution of medicine–the latter being a topic in which Sirius was far from an expert. Emmeline knew lots of things, had done research of her own, and Sirius had left the dinner party with gained respect for her. Only the next day, again thanks to Lily, Sirius had discovered that the woman was a practising alchemist, and a famous one at that. The episode had led Sirius to question how many alchemists he’d met without even knowing it. He suspected that Tom Riddle himself might have been one, with all his experimenting and weird activities, but he had no proof. It was a limited field, that of alchemy, but not an unfrequented one.

Necromancers, on the other hand, were sparse and few due to the great difficulty of the practice and its illegality, and Sirius hadn’t met many in his life. Actually, he knew of only two: Horace Slughorn, deceased, and his apprentice, Remus Lupin. Riddle’s followers had contacted them when Slughorn was still alive to commission some job of which Sirius didn’t really want to know anything. It must surely be a testament to life’s irony, that he’d heard the name of Remus Lupin, his only hope to bring Regulus back, from the same people that had murdered his brother.

Sirius put his hands in his coat pockets to shield them from the cold wind that threatened to chap them. The daylight showed the beauty of the country that the night had hidden on his first visit. The fields expanded as far as the eye could reach, until they met and faded into the grey sky. The ground Sirius was stepping on was still dark after the downpour, but thankfully it wasn’t raining–it would soon, though, if the dark clouds were anything to go by.

He knocked on Remus’s door and heard his voice call out from inside, telling him to wait a minute. His only comment when he opened the door and saw who was standing there was, “Oh.”

Sirius put on one of his most charming smiles. “I’ve come to return this,” he said, retrieving the lantern Remus had lent him from his bag.

“Ah, thank you,” Remus said. He took the lantern from his hands and moved to close the door, but Sirius stopped him.

“While we’re here,” he said, “I thought we could perhaps continue our chat from yesterday.”

“There’s nothing to add.”

“May I come in?”

“No.”

“All right,” Sirius said. He ran a hand through his hair and thought back to the speech he’d prepared. “That won’t be necessary. It’s all very simple, I’m sure we can solve it here, and quickly. As I mentioned last night, I’m prepared to pay handsomely for your services.”

“I don’t want your money.”

“A favour, then. Anything you need, I can take care of it.”

“I cannot be bought, Mr. Black.”

“Well, I’m afraid I don’t believe you. Everyone has a price.”

“Not me. Not for this.”

Sirius realised a bit too late that he’d moved a hand to the doorframe and was tapping his index on it, frantically, betraying his nervousness. In front of him, Remus stood perfectly still, arms crossed and eyes that were all but welcoming. They were green, as Sirius had noticed the night before, a very pale, gentle shade of it.

“I will save you some time,” Remus said, uncrossing his arms and grabbing the doorknob. “No, I won’t resurrect your brother, not in exchange for a favour and not for all the gold on earth. If you want my advice, I suggest you go back from where you came from, grieve as we all do and forget about necromancy altogether. It isn’t worth it.”

He tried to close the door, but once again Sirius stopped him, slipping a foot in between. Remus looked down at it and back up at Sirius’s face, brow furrowed in annoyance.

“I thank you for your advice. I feel compelled to return the favour, so here is one of my own to save _you_ some time: I will not give up. I will not go home. I’ll be back here tomorrow, knocking on your door, and the day after that and the day after that one, too, until you’ll be the one to give up. That’s a promise. The only thing you have to decide is whether you want that day to come sooner or later.”

Remus scrunched up his nose but didn’t respond. He kicked Sirius’s foot out of the way and closed the door on his face.

“All right, then,” Sirius muttered under his breath, turning his back to the house. “Later it is.”

*

Sirius kept his word. Even assuming that the alchemist was telling the truth and could not be bought in the traditional fashion, that didn’t mean that he couldn’t be bent. No matter that he’d refused to let Sirius in, no matter what he said or how coldly he would reply to his offers. On that first night, when he still had no idea who Sirius was and what he was about to ask for, he’d opened the door and offered shelter and warmth, and even after learning Sirius’s intentions, he’d still made sure he was in no physical harm. And so perhaps money, for once, wasn’t the answer, but there was no doubt in Sirius’s mind that even a man as firm and reserved as Remus Lupin had some kind of price.

So Sirius stepped out of his room, the next day, exchanged a few pleasant words with Marlene, downed a beer to warm up his insides and calm his nerves and walked along the already familiar path to the alchemist house.

The first thing Remus said when he opened the door was, “Again?”

“I told you I’d be back. I’m a man of my word.”

Remus sighed but, to Sirius’s surprise, didn’t slam the door on his face nor told him to go away. Instead, he turned around and walked back inside, leaving the door open, a rather obvious invite for Sirius to come in. After a brief moment of hesitation, he followed Remus inside, this time not in a private parlour but in the wing of the building that must have been used as a workshop. Shelves upon shelves of phials and jars and urns, of pots and plants and herbs in every empty corner of the room, bottles and scribbled papers on an old wooden counter, massive and dark, behind which stood Remus. He was leafing through a book, probably getting back to whatever he was doing before the interruption. He didn’t look up at Sirius.

The whole room fitted the romantic idea of an alchemist’s shop much more than the glimpse of Remus’s house Sirius had previously seen. His attention was drawn to his surroundings; his eyes wandered through the room, taking it all in, before fixing on the nearest shelf and the ampuls on it. The pale Northern sun that entered through the window reflected on the glass. He touched the edge of the shelf with a light finger and slid it along, reading the labels on the bottles. He took a small one, transparent glass and equally transparent liquid inside. He tilted it a little, watching the content moving inside.

“I’d be careful with that one if I were you,” Remus said, startling Sirius. When he looked back. Remus was still bent down on his papers. “That’s sulfuric acid. That substance can erode your flesh.”

Sirius grimaced and put it back in its place. “And you keep it here with the rest of your phials, and in the front row, above all?”

“Because I know what they are, and people usually tell me what they need instead of wandering alone through my shelves.”

“I didn’t know it could be dangerous,” Sirius tried to defend himself.

“You have no idea how many things are inside a phial, even the smallest one. You see the glass, a substance, maybe a label, but reading it doesn’t bring you any closer to the truth, to all there is behind it, the years of studies, of attempts and failures, the hard work, the generations it often took to perfect it; and it doesn’t bring you much closer to what’s inside, either, to all the power, sometimes life-changing, that can be contained in it. You can’t sum up all of this on a label.”

The same light that shined on the ampoules' glass hit Remus’s hair, changing its original light brown into a honey-like colour. Under those dishevelled curls, partially hidden, the delicate features of his face remained unaltered, placid and unreadable while he focused on his work like he was alone. He looked like one of those statues Sirius had seen in the rich manors he’d visited, or like the portrait of a young aristocrat: noble, frozen and lost in a time so distant that Sirius couldn’t reach it, and utterly beautiful. Had they met in a pub, on the streets, maybe even in one of those pretentious receptions he was forced to attend when he still lived with his parents, Sirius would have initiated a conversation to try and get him out for a dinner or into his bed. As of now, there were different priorities.

“Why did you let me in?” he asked.

“Don’t get your hopes up, I haven’t changed my mind.”

“Yet.”

Remus smiled. “That is exactly why. If you truly intend on bothering me every day, I might as well get some work done in the meantime.”

“You will end up getting tired of my presence.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not. Besides–and pardon my bluntness–do you not have someone to return to? Someone at home?”

Sirius thought of James and Lily. He could almost see them, standing at the doorway with worried faces, watching him leave. Lily had tried to convince him to stay and take his time to grieve, had warned him about the dangers he could encounter and the pain that false hopes could bring. James had looked at him with gloomy eyes but hadn’t tried to discourage him: the result of years of close friendship that told him that he could not change his mind even if he tried his hardest.

He shook his head. “They can wait. They know how important this is to me.”

“You’re very far from home,” Remus continued. He’d closed his book, now, and was looking at Sirius. “You are a Southern man, I can hear it in your accent.”

“Your accent doesn’t tell me anything,” Sirius replied, thinking of Marlene’s heavy Northern accent. Remus’s voice was like the man himself: unreachable.

“I suppose we could say that I’m a traveller like you, but I settled here a long time ago. Any trace of my original accent has been lost to time, but I haven’t managed to master the local inflection well enough yet.”

“It appears that we have more things in common than I originally thought.”

“Again, perhaps, perhaps not.”

He went back to scribbling on his papers, leaving Sirius with nothing to do but explore some more, this time careful not to touch any phial. They remained silent, each one engaged in his own occupation, just the sound of Remus’s work and Sirius’s footsteps up and down the room. When the time for lunch came, Remus looked up and considered Sirius for a moment before sighing and disappearing into another room, just to come back not long after with a plate of food for himself and one for his unwanted guest. Still, conversations were few and sporadic. Every attempt at bringing necromancy up was promptly blocked by Remus. More casual topics were almost well received, and a few times Remus raised his eyes from his work and exchanged pleasant, witty words with Sirius. Personal questions were answered, but always vaguely.

Back in his room at the inn, that night, Sirius sat at the bureau with an empty sheet in front of him. He tapped his finger on the wood, staring at the sheet for a long time: completely white, save for a short scribble of black ink at the top left corner: “Dear James, dear Lily”. He added a few lines, deleted them, tried a few more, deleted them too. Stared some more. Stared at the empty spaces and black smudges until he felt that a single more moment would have driven him mad and his eyes were prickling again, he wasn’t sure if because of tiredness or tears. Then the papers ended up crumpled on the ground and Sirius went to bed.

*

One day Remus opened the door with a coat in his hand, a mere moment before Sirius’s knock. At Sirius’s questioning look, he shrugged and said, “I’m tired of being stuck with you in my shop. We’re going to the meadows.”

They walked side by side, heading in the direction opposite to the village. There was no trail to follow, only open fields for miles and miles. As it often happened in the course of their shared days, they fell into a comfortable silence, that added to the overall peace of the meadow–the rustle of their clothes and of the grass, breathing, seldom bird calls, nothing more. Remus moved with experience and Sirius followed his lead, one look at the ground so he wouldn’t trip, one look at their beautiful surroundings, one look at Remus beside him.

To Sirius’s surprise, it was Remus who broke the silence first. “Going outside is my favourite part of the job,” he said. “And these meadows are my favourite part of living here.”

“How is it part of the job?”

Remus turned his head to smile at him. “I’ve spent my entire life studying the world around us–and beyond us, in a way. Alchemy, you know, is in equal part observation as it is a practice. Going outside and observing the world is grounding. It helps me remember what my job is about when I inevitably get too lost in books and experiments. Alchemy is about transformation. The world is about transformation.” He stopped to reach down and touch a tall blade of grass, rolling it through his fingers and then looking up at Sirius like he was showing him something vital and hidden. “Grass grows,” he said simply. “A seed becomes a tree, the tree grows, and it dies. Burn that wood and it becomes ashes. Human beings do the same. Everything in the world is in motion, in constant change.”

They resumed their walk, and Sirius resumed his subtle study of his companion. For all his proclaimed aversion for Sirius’s presence and requests, his shoulders were relaxed and his eyes were lost in serene contemplation of his surroundings as he explained. Sirius hummed in approval and Remus went on.

“Alchemy is about understanding and repeating these transformations, understanding the laws that regulate them, and thus regulate everything. They’re like the ingredients of a potion, or pieces of a mosaic: they’re added together to create a bigger picture, which in this case is, well, everything. The unity of it all. It’s so clear to me when I walk through the meadows. It’s not just nature, the human body is the same. Like everything else, it’s transformation. It’s cause and effect. And there lies a fascinating aspect of alchemy: the possibility of finding cures for the body through the study of its transformations.”

The house was far behind, at that point. The sky was clearer than most days, a pale blue interrupted every now and then by a passing cloud casting its shadow on the grass and on Sirius and Remus with it. 

“Here’s a question for you, my dear alchemist,” Sirius said, interrupting the brief silence that had followed Remus’s speech. Remus turned to look at him and Sirius smirked. “What’s the difference between healing and necromancy?”

Remus blinked once. “Excuse me?”

“What’s the difference? You’re still saving someone’s life, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but in healing the person isn’t dead.”

“But they would be if you don’t intervene.”

“Why do you think necromancy was made illegal? It interferes with the natural order of life, with its natural course.”

“Subversing the natural order, is that your answer? Isn’t society already bending that order? Isn’t healing? You’re curing someone who was supposed to die. How is that any different?”

“If you can heal a person, then it means that their body has a margin of recovery. With necromancy, you’re already on the other side, you’re in too deep. It’s dangerous.”

“Is that why you gave up, then? Are you afraid?”

“There are two main reasons why people want to resurrect others: either they want their loved ones back, or they want servants. Slaves. You know about that, don’t you? Resurrecting a body so that it’s merely that, a body. Mindless, powerless, completely under your control. I don’t need to tell you why that’s immoral. And yet my master did it, a few times, pressured, forced, by individuals without a trace of morality or respect in them. People I’d like to never meet again. A sight that I’d like to never see again, too.”

A familiar shiver ran down Sirius’s spine, the one that always crept on him when he thought of Riddle’s circle. He was ready to bet that they were the customers Remus was describing: morality or respect were definitely not attributes that they possessed. He’d never seen those mindless slaves with his own eyes, but he remembered Regulus mentioning something about new servants commissioned by Riddle a few years back, a comment that Sirius hadn’t fully understood at the time but that made sense now. It would have explained the slight shade of disgust on Regulus’s face when he’d told him.

Regulus. He proved his morality in the end.

“What about the good ones, then?” he asked. “Don’t they deserve help?”

“I already told you,” Remus snapped, and his tone was annoyed in a way it hadn’t been before. “It’s too dangerous. I wish people would just forget about necromancy. It gives hope, but it makes the grieving process harder, too. And it fills people with doubt, both before and after.” He sighed, regaining his composure. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

They fell back into silent walking, but this silence lacked the peace and ease of their usual ones. Remus was walking faster, leaving Sirius a few steps behind, the only hint that something was wrong while his body went back to its usual undreadableness. Regulus’s face was all Sirius could see in his mind.

The air was chillier for the upcoming winter. Sirius shivered in his coat and shoved his hands deeper in his pockets. “It’s freezing,” he casually mentioned, raising his head to try and spot a reaction in Remus. He expected a little sympathy from a man always enveloped in layers of wool, but he just said, “You’ll learn to live with it.”

They parted on cordial terms nonetheless, if earlier than usual. Marlene must have noticed, too, because she sent Sirius a questioning look when she saw him enter the tavern. There were already a few customers at the tables, and he plumped down on an empty chair and waited for her.

“Do you want to dine now?” she asked, cleaning her hands on the apron before putting them on her hips with her signature intimidatory pose.

“If you don’t mind at all.”

“Not at all. Were you successful today?”

“Ah,” Sirius said, followed by a joyless chuckle. “Not today, no.”

Marlene grimaced and hesitated a moment before sitting on the seat opposite to Sirius. “He can be very difficult to convince.”

“You know him?” Sirius asked. “Personally?”

“What a great question. Do I? I’m not sure.” She sighed. “I’ve lived in this small town my entire life, from the day I was born until this very moment with you. I remember when he came into town, when we were nothing more than children. The rest of us would always play together in the square or in the streets, but he never joined us, not once. He spent all his time with that man, Slughorn, learning I don’t know what. Alchemy, or whatever it was. We’ve had many conversations through the years, when he comes outside or when I go to him to buy something, always short. I’ve tried to be a friend, but he’s never accepted my invitations. Not that he’s ever been rude,” she added, looking concerned that Sirius might think that. “He’s always extremely polite, but… never open.”

“He seems to be a good man,” Sirius said.

“Did he open up to you?” Marlene asked, an odd look in her eyes that Sirius couldn’t decipher.

“I’m not sure.” With his disgust for necromancy and the danger its profession entailed, it was no wonder that he never let his guard down, and Sirius knew how hard it was to forget the ways of life in which one is raised. What he didn’t know was whether the conversation in the meadows, however harsh, counted as Remus letting his guard down and letting Sirius in. “He might have.”

“I hope so,” Marlene said. “He needs a friend.”

Sirius fixed on the wooden veins of the table, followed them with his eyes. “I’m not a friend,” he said. “I’m a client.” He didn’t raise his head but felt Marlene’s glare on him, still for a moment that seemed to stretch for too long, until she sighed again and stood up.

“Dinner, then.”

“Dinner.”

Upstairs, with a full stomach and a delicious sore in his leg muscles, Sirius sat down at the feet of the bed. In front of him, the painting above the bureau was illuminated by the flickering light of the candle. The landscape looked familiar to Sirius: an open field, tall green grass and the brightest blue sky. The strokes were rough but decisive. Just below the skyline, so small Sirius hadn’t noticed it before, was the figure of a man dressed in black.

*

Ever since the murder, Sirius had been seeing Regulus on the floor, still and covered in blood. It had haunted his dreams as well as his waking hours, an awful reminder that appeared every time he closed his eyes. That image was now disappearing, replaced by that of his brother’s corpse in his coffin, under the ground, rotting more and more every day. His cheeks carved, the skin sticking to his skull, worms feasting on his body. Every strike of the hour was a blow on Sirius’s skin, a whip he felt echoing in his bones.

Marlene had said that Remus needed a friend, but Sirius needed his brother.

Yes, Remus’s company had been unexpectedly pleasant, and Sirius had enjoyed both their careful conversations and the mere act of observing Remus work in silence, but all that had been replaced by pure and simple guilt for the wasted time. Remus himself was reacting to his restlessness; Sirius had caught him watching him, his composed veil for once lifted from his eyes to reveal what looked like genuine concern.

Still, he hadn’t conceded.

“You have to understand,” said Remus, “that there are some collateral damages, even when an excellent necromancer performs it.”

“And are you an excellent necromancer?”

“That’s beside the point. There’s still a risk. More than that, it’s never going to be as it was before.”

“Maybe that’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

“Maybe that shouldn’t be your choice, ever thought of that?”

“Well, sorry that my little brother wasn’t planning on getting murdered and didn’t leave me instructions.”

“Sirius,” Remus said after a long moment of silence. He reached his arm across the table, as if to get closer to Sirius without actually moving nearer. “I’m sorry about your brother. I truly am.”

*

It was late afternoon when Sirius lost hold of his emotions. The sky was already dark with the looming night, and he was at the workshop playing idly with the sulfuric acid phial, Regulus’s pale, lifeless face all he could see. He’d dreamt of it, that night, of the blade sinking into his body. Regulus had looked him in the eye for a long, eternal moment before collapsing, and then it was only blood and pale skin and dead eyes. He could see them right now, still staring at him, empty.

“Why won’t you help me?”

Remus looked up. His worried gaze went from Sirius to the phial in his hands to Sirius’s face again. “I’ve already explained that–”

“Yes, yes, you don’t approve of necromancy, you’ve told me many times, but... Why don’t you help me? Why can’t you understand?”

“I understand perfectly.”

“I don’t think you do. You say you’re sorry about my brother, and yet you don’t do anything to help. Because that’s the thing. People say that when someone dies. Sorry. ‘I’m sorry for your loss, I’m sorry for your brother. I’m sorry that–that you’re alone now, that you’ll never see him again.’ My friends told me that, the priest at the burial told me that. But you–you can actually do something. You simply choose not to.”

“Sirius,” Remus said, voice calm as always. “Put the phial down.”

Sirius scoffed. “Is this your main problem at the moment?”

“It could be yours.”

“No,” Sirius said, but he put the phial back into its place. “Say, have I ever told you how Regulus died?”

“You haven’t.”

“Would you like to know?” He smirked, feigning confidence that he didn’t have and happiness he didn’t feel. “I think you ought to. Remember those people that came here when your mentor was alive and asked for slaves? They answered to a man named Tom Riddle, a fanatic with sick ideas regarding the superiority of certain individuals over others and a criminal system built around his figure. Many thought he was right, some began to follow him. My own parents, deranged as they are, felt sympathy towards him. He could have done great, terrible things.”

“I’ve never heard of him.”

“No, and you have to thank my brother for it. He’s the one that killed him.” Sirius clenched his fist. The dagger sinking into Regulus’s flesh. “And he was murdered for it.” Blood, pale skin, dead eyes. “He died so we could live, and he deserves a second chance. He deserves to be alive as well, perhaps more than any of us.”

“Sirius,” Remus said again. He walked around the counter and came closer to Sirius, stopping when he was at arm-reach to stare at him with wide eyes, his hand half-lifted as if he was considering closing the distance between them. He didn’t.

“He could have that chance if you granted it to him.” 

“Sirius,” Remus said for the third time, and that’s when Sirius realised that, somewhere in his speech, he’d started crying. Silent tears, warm in the trail they left on his cheeks.

He wiped them away with a curt, angry movement of his hand.

“You’re my only hope, Remus Lupin,” he said.

Remus lowered his hand. As Sirius cut open his chest and laid his raw emotions in front of him, Remus slipped back into his cold composure. Never before had he looked more like an ancient statue to Sirius, so lost in time that, for a brief second, the bloody vision of Regulus in his mind looked more real than Remus, who was right there, so close he could touch him.

“I will say this one last time,” Remus said. “Nothing will be as it was before.”

“It can’t be worse than it is now,” Sirius replied. _I don’t want it to be as it was before_ , his mind whispered to him.

Remus kept looking at him, then nodded. “I’ll do it.”

*

It hadn’t been long since the last time Sirius had visited the cemetery, and yet the place looked like an unknown world. Perhaps it was the influence of the night, of the moonlight that shone on the graves from the clear sky. Or perhaps it was Remus’s presence behind him, the trunk they were carrying, the knowledge of what they were about to do. 

They had waited for the night to fall, for the city to become a little quieter and the guardian to make his last patrol for the day, and they had climbed the hill that hosted the cemetery. He could see the shadows of the funeral procession–it had been small, only James, Lily, a few more friends, the priest, and Sirius himself–and followed his memories to his brother’s grave. Regulus’s final rebellion, targeted against both Riddle and his own family, had cost him his life for the first and a burned figure on the family tree tapestry for the second. The Black family, Regulus’s parents, hadn’t reclaimed the body, hadn’t taken care of the burial, hadn't even been present. A burn on the tree meant no support, no contacts, no place in the family mausoleum. Sirius–or, more than Sirius, James and Lily–had taken care of it. They’d found the lonely grave over which Sirius was now standing. A name and a date carved on the grey stone. A bouquet of white flowers–still fresh, but quickly wilting. Lily, probably.

A hand clasped his shoulder, and Sirius turned his head to see Remus looking at him with knowing eyes.

“We need to dig,” he said. “We don’t have much time.”

Sirius nodded and tightened the grip on his shovel. He expected Remus to start working, but he didn’t move towards the grave nor prepared his tool, he simply kept watching Sirius in silence. Regulus Arcturus Black, the grave said, and Sirius felt those letters carved in his flesh, too, burning on his skin. He knelt down to move the flowers to the side of the stone before pushing the shovel into the ground. Remus joined him after that first thrust, digging by his side.

There was relief in the mechanical motions, in the soreness that spread through his muscles after a while, in the rhythmic sound of the shovels delving into the soil. The night on the hill was much more peaceful than the ones he’d known in the rest of the city, and Remus was, as it often happened while he was focused on his work, a silent companion. They dug for a long time, descending into the earth, clothes turning black with the dirt, before their spades hit the hardwood of the coffin.

“I’ll take it from here,” Remus said once they’d lifted the coffin and laid it beside the hole.

“I can help,” Sirius objected.

“Have you ever seen a weeks-old corpse?” he asked, sending an unpleasant jolt through Sirius’s body. “It’s better if you walk away and let me take care of this part alone. I’ll call you when I’m done. Don’t argue. You don’t want to do this, trust me.”

Sirius told himself that he trusted Remus’s judgement but, as he glanced one last time at the coffin and turned around to move away, he was aware of the sheer fear the coffin and its inhabitant provoked in him. He went to stand in a corner where he could see the city. James and Lily were there somewhere, in their little home, probably asleep, maybe awake and worrying about him. He still hadn’t managed to write them a letter and something kept him from visiting now that he was in the city–as with the coffin, Sirius lied to himself and blamed the work he was doing. It barely mattered, now that Remus had accepted the job. He could hear him moving behind him, fumbling with the trunk. He closed his eyes, trying to keep the images evoked by those sounds away from his mind. It barely mattered, soon James and Lily would stop worrying; with Riddle dead, they would be free to move to the small town they’d always dreamt of, start a family, while Sirius would have his back.

“It’s done.”

Sirius walked back to Remus. He seemed paler than before and was looking at Sirius with a pained expression. Remus grabbed his arm while his eyes skimmed Sirius’s face with an intensity that made him feel naked, exposed. In spite of any rational suggestion, Sirius had the impression that Remus would easily read him, if he stared into his eyes long enough. On the contrary, Sirius had no idea what that grimness in his eyes meant. Pity, perhaps, what Sirius had cultivated with his teary story? Distrust in him, regret for his choice?

Sirius found that he preferred his disinterest to his pity; he turned towards the hole in the ground instead, and Remus let go of his arm.

“Let’s bury this thing back and go,” Sirius said.

*

Sirius found out about the laboratory in the basement only upon their return, when Remus hauled the trunk towards a small wooden door to which Sirius hadn’t paid much attention before. He’d thought it was simply a storage room until he saw it open on a dark staircase leading into the earth.

“I need to prepare the body,” Remus said. “Apply certain unguents and potions to preserve it and better its conditions.” He walked up to his usual table and wrote something down on a scrap of sheet he handed to Sirius. “Here’s a list of things I need from around the house. Everything’s labelled, you shouldn’t have troubles finding them. Bring them here when you do, I shouldn’t be long.” With that, he dragged the truck down the first steps with a light thud and closed the door behind him, leaving Sirius to stare at it with the note in his hand.

He scanned the items on the list. Ingredients, concoctions, books with the most bizarre titles, some with a note on the side indicating where they could be found and others without. With one last glance at the closed door, Sirius turned away from it, walking back to the workshop and its shelves. Remus’s writing–thin, tall letters, messy in its rush and yet still somewhat elegant, familiar to Sirius after hours of peeking over the alchemist’s notes–guided him through rows of phials, metals, and herbs, through books, some old and heavy with their large pages and refined leather covers, a few simple notes bound together, written in the same calligraphy that was on the list or in an unknown one, perhaps Slughorns’s. Sirius’s fingers twitched as he traced the words, the sketches of human bodies and rocks and plants, the drawings of symbols he didn’t recognise. Forbidden knowledge inside books and ampoules. They were so close, he thought.

Remus re-emerged from the laboratory when Sirius was going back to the table with the last two books.

“Put them there,” he said, pointing at the last empty space left on the surface, next to a becher. He rolled his sleeves up before taking a couple of the phials Sirius had prepared for him and adding them to the clear liquid already inside the becher. As soon they touched the surface, they changed into a different colour, turning the whole content into a bright golden. Remus caught the awe in Sirius’s eyes and smiled. “The preparation of the body is a vital part of the process. Soon we’ll be able to move to the thing itself, but first we need to do this. I need your help.”

Sirius found that there was something beautiful in watching Remus at work. It wasn’t like the previous times: then, he’d been collected, cool, immersed in what he was doing as a diligent student would be. Now, there was a fire in his eyes, a fever in his movements and words. He guided Sirius through the making of solutions, asked him to hand him ingredients or read certain passages from books out loud while he took notes and drew with the precision of an erudite and the fervour of a man possessed. Sirius struggled to understand many of the alchemic formulas and reactions, the words on his tongue as he read familiar but somehow unknown, but he was glad to have something to keep his mind occupied and smiled back at Remus when he looked up from his work to check on him.

The night found them bent over the table, working by candlelight, two empty bowls of soup close to their elbows from their quick, improvised dinner. Sirius’s neck had been aching for a good hour, a sore spot right above his shoulder that he kept massaging without any improvement, and his eyelids were becoming heavier and heavier. He yawned, and Remus gave him a tired half-smile.

“We should get some rest,” Remus said, closing the books and piling them on top of each other. He left them on the counter as he moved away from it. “It’s late,” he added when he saw Sirius looking around for his coat. “Don’t bother going to the inn. You can stay here, sleep on my sofa. If you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” Sirius said, following Remus into the other room. He stood there as Remus went to retrieve a blanket for him, a reminder of the first time they’d met.

“Thank you for letting me stay,” Sirius said when Remus came back. _Thank you for helping me_ , it was what he meant, but he supposed Remus understood nonetheless. They stood in front of each other with nothing to say for a long moment before Remus broke the silence.

“I’m upstairs if you need anything,” he said, offering him the blanket and another tired smile before disappearing behind the door again.

Sirius lay down on the sofa, burying himself under the blanket. Sleeping in his day clothes wasn’t the most comfortable choice, but a ruffled shirt had nothing against the heaviness of his limbs, so he couldn’t find it in himself to care. As he watched the last embers in the fireplace die, he thought of James and Lily in their home, of Remus in his room, and of Regulus, underground, so close to him, waiting.

*

Sirius was waiting. With the hour fast approaching and the preparations all done, there wasn’t much else left to do. A sense of expectation hung heavy in the air, of the type that translates into both hectic electricity and slowed-down time, like the night before a trip or the moments that precede the entrance of the actors on a stage.

Instead, it was the night before his brother’s comeback and he and Remus were sitting down on the carpet of his parlour, by the fire, a bunch of books scattered and open on the floor although neither of them was reading. Waiting. Sirius was idly fiddling with the page corner of the book in front of him, watching Remus as he revised the theories of necromancy. He knew that Remus excited as well, that he, too, felt the anticipation rushing through his veins.

“You have to operate on the actuating cause,” Remus explained. He sat cross-legged within arm’s reach from Sirius, close enough that Sirius could see every detail of him in the dim light. His sleeves were still rolled up–a habit that Sirius had come to associate with a Remus engrossed in his work–exposing a few thin scars that graced his skin before disappearing under his shirt. “Once that you’ve found the source, you can work towards its awakening. A dead body is only matter. For it to be alive, you need to bring consciousness back to it.”

Sirius nodded, assuming a pensive look as he laid his head on his hands and let his eyes trail on Remus, from his bare arms up to the focused expression on his face, following the lines of his scars, taking in the way the light of the fire danced on his skin. There was something about his eyes, the same something that had been lighting them up ever since they’d come back from the city, that bright spark that Sirius couldn’t help but focus on. That’s why, when Remus met his gaze, Sirius noticed how they softened.

“I will need your assistance in the laboratory tomorrow,” he said. “Do you think you can do it?”

“What, you think I’ll get scared?” Sirius scoffed, but he changed his tone when he saw the flash of worry in Remus’s eyes. “I took my risks when I came here,” he said honestly. “I knew it wasn’t going to be easy or pleasant. I can take it.”

Remus nodded. “It’s been so long since last time,” he said, almost to himself, and Sirius didn’t miss the twitch of his lips. “I didn’t expect you, Sirius Black.” 

It had quickly become the norm for Sirius to be captivated by the wonder that was Remus Lupin, with his brilliant mind and his kindness and the warmth and beauty of a smile that was becoming much less of a rarity as the days passed. Sirius had never tried to fool himself in this regard: it would have been useless to deny the effect that the man had on him. He’d simply put it aside, trying to focus solely on what they had to do, something far more important than whatever feelings he could have. As a good man would have done.

And maybe it was that very same excitement that had enveloped them both that evening, maybe it was the way he’d noticed Remus return his glances now that he’d let his guard down, or maybe it was the fact that Sirius was not, in truth, a good man. Whatever the reason, Sirius felt the need to break all his promises. With only a book and a short distance to separate them, it wasn’t much of a choice.

Damning all caution, he got up on his knees and moved forward to close the gap, bringing a hand to the back of Remus’s head and his lips on his mouth. Remus’s breath hitched and it was only a second–a soft gasp, Remus freezing, Sirius moving slightly away–before he was kissing him back, burying a hand in Sirius’s long hair, tilting his head to deepen the kiss.

Sirius put a hand on Remus’s back and pushed him backwards until he was lying on the floor, Sirius on top of him, kissing him hard. Remus grabbed the back of his shirt and Sirius pressed himself against him as their bodies and mouths moved together. Remus’s hand, cold from the hours spent in the laboratory, slipped from his hair to the back of his neck, sending a shiver down Sirius’s spine. Sirius shifted his position and went to kiss his jaw and neck, enjoying the noise that escaped Remus’s mouth. It sounded a lot like Sirius’s name, broken and slurred. Remus tightened his grip on his clothes, and Sirius felt drunk on the ragged breathing of Remus and the hammering of his own heart.

Sirius shoved a thigh between Remus’s legs and slid a hand under his shirt, dragging his nails up along his side. “You’re incredible,” Sirius whispered in his ear.

And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it ended.

Remus grabbed his hand and pushed it away as he disentangled himself from Sirius’s embrace.

“Forgive me,” he said, standing up, “but this is a terrible idea.”

Sirius looked up from where he’d been left kneeling on the ground. “What? Why?”

“I just…” Remus ran a hand through his hair, already dishevelled from Sirius’s fingers, messing them up even more. He was still panting. “We shouldn’t do this. We should go to bed and rest and get ready for tomorrow. This is why you’re here, right?”

Sirius opened his mouth to say something, but Remus was faster. Before Sirius could find the words, Remus bent over to pick up the book they’d ungraciously shoved aside while they were kissing, murmured a quick goodnight and left.

Sirius crossed his legs and buried his head in his hands with a sigh. His heart was still beating hard–if from the kiss or the rejection, he didn’t know. What he knew was that he was, once again, alone, and it was his own doing.

*

When Sirius woke up, the room was filled with the soft light of the morning, the blanket had descended below his waist, and Remus was standing beside the sofa, looking down at him. He was already dressed for the day and the sunshine caught in his hair in that way that made it look somewhat angelic and ethereal, and so, so soft. His first thought was that he was beautiful. The second was a memory of running his hands in that very same hair, of ragged breath and lips pressing together, and Sirius remembered. For a moment, he feared that Remus was there to throw him out of his home and his breath hitched, but Remus only said, “You should get ready. It’s time.”

Sirius sat up and looked up to meet his eyes, searching for a sign of anger or disgust on his face, only to come out with nothing of the sort. Remus looked as composed as ever. Sirius sighed and stood up. He would have thought the previous night was nothing more than a dream if it wasn’t for the vividness of his memories. He could still feel the ghost of Remus’s skin under his lips.

“Wash your face, wear something comfortable. Try and put something in your stomach,” Remus said. “I’ll be waiting for you in the laboratory.”

Left alone, Sirius fell back onto the sofa and pressed his eyes closed, trying to regain focus on what he had to do and why. It was all very simple: he’d sought Remus’s help to have Regulus back, and the time had finally come. That was all he had to do.

He followed Remus’s suggestion, splashed cold water on his face in hope that it would help him clear his mind. He found a plate with bread and cheese on the table and his heart clenched at the sight, at the kindness of the thought–or maybe at the thought alone. He wondered, briefly, if in another universe that gesture could mean more than it did now, but it wasn’t time for such speculations. He left the food untouched. He wasn’t hungry, anyway.

He stopped at the stairs. Just for a moment, an instant in which he stared at the open door and the darkness behind it and said to himself: this is it, this is why I’m here. Then he stepped over the threshold and down the stairs, conscious that there was no turning back.

The laboratory was cold and clean, and the grey stones of its walls gave it a sombre atmosphere. There were shelves that resembled the ones in the workshop, stuffed with phials and tools. The sunlight was streaming in from a small window on the upper side of the wall on his left, pouring at the centre of the room, where the table was. Beside the table stood Remus, his back turned to Sirius, head bent down.

In front of him, the body.

From his position, Sirius couldn’t see the face, hidden behind Remus, but he could see the rest of him, his lifeless limbs. He was naked save for a brown cloth laid on his hips.

Remus spoke without turning around, “Come here.”

Sirius walked towards the table. He recognised Regulus’s body–it was his hand lying palm down on the wood, it was his scar, there on his calf, the one he’d got from falling off a low branch while they were playing in their uncle’s garden as children–but, with his head out of his field of vision, his brain could still pretend that it was someone else, not his brother. He walked around the table, holding his breath as the face came into view.

It was Regulus. Short raven hair, sharp features, the noble profile of the Black family. On his abdomen, the wound that marked the place where the knife had entered his body. His eyes were closed. Without his fancy clothes and defensive frown, he seemed younger and frail and, ultimately, nothing more than his little brother. His appearance was better than one would expect from a weeks-old corpse, which Sirius assumed was the result of the treatments Remus had mentioned. He looked peaceful, as if he was merely sleeping, yet something was awfully wrong, something that made Sirius’s chest heavy with anxiety. It took him a moment to realise that it was the absence of breathing and movement.

Sirius went to stand in front of Remus, on the other side of the table, and looked up at him. He was already watching him, waiting for a sign, and when Sirius nodded he lowered his eyes on the body and said, “Let’s begin.”

Four phials and a small knife had been placed on the portion of table above Regulus’s head. Sirius recognised the liquids from the previous days at Remus’s side, although he had no idea what they were or what they would do. The knife had a short but sharp blade and a bone-carved handle with flowers etched on it.

What Sirius had to do, Remus explained, was pour the liquid contained in the phials on the symbols he would draw on the corner of the triangle, and, last, the one at the centre. It wasn’t too hard, and the bottles were already positioned in the right order, but he had to be quick and precise in his job.

Remus gave one last glance at Sirius before taking the knife and placing it against Regulus’s chest. The first incision felt like it was done on Sirius himself. Remus drew a perfect circle, big enough to fill the whole chest and touch the lower part of the abdomen. The absence of blood left in the wake of the blade was as jarring as the lack of breathing and almost worse than the image of Regulus covered in blood that had been living in Sirius’s head since the moment he’d learnt of his death.

Remus kept working on his meticulous design, delineating a triangle inside the circle, the three corners touching its line, and following it with other shapes and details and symbols that created an intricate picture in which Sirius lost himself.

Then Remus carved on the corner of the triangle closest to Sirius and said, “First bottle, now.”

Sirius grabbed the phial and, as soon as the blade left the skin, emptied it on the new mark. The bottle was far from being filled to the brim, only a few drops of liquid inside, enough to wet the rather small symbol on the angle. Sirius looked up at Remus to catch a reaction to his work, but he was already focused on the next angle. Sirius put back the phial and took the one on its side. When Remus told him to act, he had the phial in position and swiftly poured it on the fresh cut. The third one went as smoothly, and a thrill ran down Sirius’s spine as he watched the liquid falling onto the open flesh. He took the fourth one and glanced again at Remus, waiting for his directions on what to do. He looked back and murmured, “Last one,” before bringing the knife to the centre of the design and tracing yet another symbol. Sirius uncapped the phial and, when Remus moved his hand away, held it above the centre. And he stopped.

Only for a moment–a brief hesitation as he looked at the phial between his fingers, reclined so that the liquid was close to the opening, and then at his brother’s face, and his chest, and the intricate shapes on it–but he heard the panic in Remus’s voice when he said, “You need to be quick!” and grabbed his wrist. The suddenness and strength of his grip startled him, and he lost his hold on the phial.

It fell down on the body, spilling its content. Remus moved quickly, getting the phial and pouring the few drops left inside on the symbol, then dabbing around it to absorb the liquid. Sirius just stared, not able to move or apologise, or to ask if everything would be all right. Remus didn’t say anything, nor did he look at him. He put his hands on the edge of the table and leaned on them, watching the body closely, eyes darting from his face to the chest and back to the face.

Sirius took a step back, gaze fixed on Remus. He knew that, if he looked down, he would just see an immobile body, so he kept staring at Remus, searching his eyes for the trace of an answer: disappointment, victory, fear. Anything.

It was hard to tell how long it’d passed before he mustered enough courage to look down himself. When he did, he found exactly what he expected: Regulus, still motionless, still dead.

He hugged himself. He had no idea how long a reanimation could take, but Remus’s deep, shaky breaths and the way he was clenching his hands around the edge of the table weren’t a good sign.

Regulus’s face, young and lifeless, the same that had haunted him for days, now concrete and in front of him: that was the worst sign of them all.

Then, before Sirius could look away, a movement. Small, caught in the corner of his eye, so brief that he thought he was imagining it.

“Remus,” he said, reaching out to touch him. He kept his eyes trained on Regulus, and there it was again, after a moment: a movement just under his eyelids. “Remus!”

“What is it?”

He pointed at Regulus’s face and heard Remus’s breath hitch. The movement was more frequent, now, and quicker, the unmistakable motion of the eyeball. He glanced at Remus, who was staring down at Regulus like he was transfixed, and then down again, in a frantic state ordered by the blood rushing through his veins and his heart hammering in his ears.

Caught in his excitement, he almost missed the twitch in Regulus’s fingers. But there it was, once again, unmistakable: his fingers were moving, curling, tapping, trembling as if that action required all their strength, as if they were fighting against some invisible force that opposed their awakening. All of his body looked like that: his eyes were moving but the eyelids were still shut, the twitching of his fingers was slowly reaching his arms, and from his arms the shoulders, and the torso, and then his legs–all giving soft spasms, but even feebler than his fingers or eyes, and occurring less often. A thin line of blood surfaced from the cuts, a few droplets falling on the sides.

“Look,” Remus said.

Sirius followed his glance back to Regulus’s face, where the eyelids had started moving, too. They fluttered lightly, softly, then lifted all the way up to reveal his eyes. What Sirius saw was familiar grey eyes, pupils narrow from the light, moving around as they had done when they were shut. They weren’t focusing on anything, shifting from one point to another quickly, as if he wasn’t seeing it at all. Sirius saw Remus’s hand slipping closer, resting against Regulus’s throat; he told himself to get closer, too, to aid his brother, and found that he couldn’t move.

Then the eyes stopped, fixating on the ceiling above him– _not on me, not on me_ , Sirius thought–and they closed again. This time there was no movement beneath the eyelids, and when they lifted the eyes were still watching upwards, towards the same spot as before. Sirius was once again filled with the unpleasant sensation that something was off.

He wasn’t blinking and his eyes were unfocused and distant. No, Sirius realised, not distant: blind. Dead.

He looked at the rest of his body and found it perfectly still: no twitch, no spasms, no sign of movement at all. Nothing in his fingers, or in his chest. He wasn’t breathing.

Sirius felt Remus’s gaze on him, but he couldn’t bring himself to glance back at him. When he did, he looked into his eyes and managed a broken “What...?” before leaving the question hanging.

“Shit.” Remus muttered under his breath, then louder: “Shit, Sirius, I’m so sorry.”

“What happened?”

“Something went wrong,” he said, as if it wasn’t made clear by the corpse lying between them. What Remus didn’t say, and what, Sirius was sure of it, they were both thinking, was the reason behind their failure. That last mistake.

“Then fix it. This is your job, right? Then–”

“It’s not my job.”

“–try again. We were close.”

“It’s not that simple.” Remus ran a hand over his face with a tired sigh. “I can’t simply try again.”

“Why not?” Sirius asked, voice higher than usual. “This is your job!”

“It’s not, it’s not my job!” Remus snapped. He leaned over the table, getting closer to Sirius. “You asked me. I only did this for you.”

“Well, I’m asking you again. Prepare those potions again, prepare the body, do what you need to do.”

“Sirius…”

Sirius had a lump in his throat when he said, “He moved! Remus, he–”

“You need to listen to me. I can’t do it, all right? It’s too late.”

“No,” Sirius said. He didn’t know what he was saying no to–Remus? his refusal? their failure?–, he just blurted it out and took his leave, while Remus called his name once and then fell silent.

*

The bright blue sky and late morning sun, so rare in those winter days, felt like a bad joke as Sirius rushed out of the house and marched across the fields, heading into town. The cold, on the other hand, was a blessing, stinging his skin in a sobering way. He left his coat open, hoping that it would hurt enough to calm him down. Numb limbs, numb mind.

He let his feet follow whichever path they chose and soon found himself on the now-familiar way to Marlene’s inn. The warmth of the tavern hit him like a wave when he stepped inside, sparking burning tingles on his freezing face and hands. Marlene was behind the counter, busy chatting with a young woman with long, black hair, but she held his gaze when their eyes met, and she waved for him to come closer.

“I thought you wouldn’t come back,” she said, sending an apologetic smile to the woman in front of her.

Sirius did the same, nodding in her direction to apologise for the interruption, then addressed Marlene with an equally remorseful smile. “Would you by any chance have a free room for today?”

“You do not look like you’re well,” she said, ignoring his request. “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Where have you been, then? Were you with…?”

“The alchemist? Yes.”

“The alchemist,” Marlene repeated, slowly, as if she was tasting the word on her tongue. She inspected him with a displeased grimace on her face but once again chose not to press him any further. “I do have a room. Your old one, actually.”

“Thank you,” said Sirius.

Marlene nodded and went back to her conversation after giving Sirius the key. He did however feel her gaze heavy on his back as he climbed the stairs to the room, and he wondered what she could think of that, of him, walking in her inn in a distressed face after all those days, coming from Remus’s house. He closed the door behind him with too much strength.

The room was the same as when he’d left, and he went to lie down on the red blanket, coat and shoes still on. Staring at the ceiling as Regulus had.

And so it had all been for nothing. The travel, the persuasion, the days of hard work. He was at the same point as he was when the idea of finding a necromancer had first appeared in his mind: lying on someone else’s pillows, a painful pressure on his chest, with nothing but his grief and a dead brother. He’d thought he could save him, he really had.

He let the clock tick, time washing over his skin like tidal waves, not moving an inch. When his stomach gave the first timid grumble, he ignored it. He listened to the noise coming from downstairs, voices and laughter and cutlery clatter, and the footsteps of a few other customers walking past his door.

Hanging on the wall opposite to him, the painting of the figure in the meadows kept watching him.

The truth was that he couldn’t get Remus out of his mind.

Remus that first night, a dark silhouette against the doorway. Remus behind the counter, with the sunlight shining through his hair, and Remus standing before Regulus’s grave, covered in dirt and looking at Sirius with worried eyes. Remus the night before, sitting on the ground before the fireplace, looking so beautiful as he talked to him. His soft lips on his own and his strong hands all over Sirius’s body, holding him close. And then Remus in the laboratory, calling his name with something in his voice that–Sirius realised it, now–sounded an awful lot like fear.

It should have been strange, how his treacherous thoughts kept going back to him, and instead it only felt natural. The more time passed, the more he wished he hadn’t fled, leaving Remus alone. Leaving himself alone, in that inn room, when all he wanted to do was feel Remus’s arms around his body again and allow himself to stay there and cry.

When the sky took on the electric blue of the late afternoon, Sirius got up from the bed and left the inn.

*

As it always happened in the coldest season, the night had fallen in the blink of an eye, and the moon was already shining in the dark sky when Sirius arrived at the house. He stopped to take a look at it and inhale one deep breath of chilling air before turning around to knock on the door. Remus might not open it, or, worse, he might do so to sever all their ties and send him away once and for all. He knocked anyway.

He was starting to think his fears were correct when he heard a rustle from the other side and the door burst open, revealing a wide-eyed, wild-haired Remus who looked at him without saying anything.

“I–” Sirius started, then he stopped and cleared his voice. “I’m here to retrieve the body,” he said, wondering if Remus could see through his lie.

Remus nodded and stepped aside. “Please, come in.”

Sirius closed the door behind them and shrugged off his coat before following Remus to the parlour, where Remus made him sit down on the sofa by the fireplace.

“I’ll go heat you some soup, you look cold. You can take the body afterwards,” he said.

“I’m not here for the body,” Sirius said. “Well, I suppose I’m also here for it. I need to take him back. But I’m here because… I’m here to talk to you.”

Remus nodded as if he already knew. “I’ll make you that soup,” he said, and he left.

Sirius rubbed his hands on his thighs as he looked around. The blanket he’d been using to sleep for the past few days was still folded over the armrest where he’d left it that morning, and the books from the night before had been closed and put in a pile on the ground but not brought back to their rightful places. It had only been one day since his and Remus’s last talk by the fire, but the thought appeared somehow nonsensical in Sirius’s mind.

Remus came back with two bowls of soup and handed one to him. Sirius splayed his fingers on the hot bowl, sighing at warmth spreading through them, then took a sip from the spoon. The rich taste of it on his tongue reminded him of his stomach’s pleas for food, and he finished the soup in a few generous spoonfuls, aware of Remus’s eyes on him the whole time.

He set the empty bowl aside and cleared his voice again. “I apologise for my behaviour this morning. I shouldn’t have run away.”

“You were upset. It’s understandable.”

“It doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t have been kinder to you. You were right, I did ask you to do it.”

Remus set aside his bowl as well. He hadn’t touched his food. He laid his hands in his lap and turned towards Sirius, looking at him.

When it became clear that he wasn’t about to speak again, Sirius continued. “I was afraid. I haven’t told you everything about my brother and his death.”

“He died because he killed Riddle.”

“Yes, but–” Sirius took a deep breath. “He was one of them. Of his followers. Our family is an ancient and noble one, attached to ridiculous ideas of status and blood. My parents believed in them and raised me and Regulus teaching us that our lives were worth more than those of other people and that certain lives were not worthy at all. I started rebelling against them and, when I was old enough to take care of myself, I left. Although, if you ask my parents, they would tell you that I was disowned.” He let out a bitter laugh. “I went to stay with a friend. Regulus, on the other hand, had always been more obedient and respectful. He was my mother’s favourite, her golden boy. When Riddle appeared and started gaining followers, and my parents approved, Regulus joined him.”

“And then he changed his mind.”

“Despite everything, I loved my brother, and he loved me. It was a strict upbringing, ours, and devoid of affection. In the end, we only had each other. He realised that our family’s beliefs were sick and just how deep Riddle’s hate ran. How insane it all was. He came back to me, and I–” He rubbed his face. “We fought. I wanted my brother back, I wanted him out of that house, but we’d fought so many times before, and we did so again. I left him alone, and now he’s dead.”

“I have already told you, Sirius, I am incredibly sorry I couldn’t–”

“No! No, that is not what I meant to say. You helped me, and for that I will be forever grateful. But I was afraid.”

“I don’t understand.”

Sirius felt a knot in his stomach as a pang of guilt shot through it. “I wanted a second chance for him, as I’ve told you, and I wanted a second chance for myself, too. I came to you because I thought I could save him, but I was so scared. Of what he would’ve said, whether he would have forgiven me or not. Of him not being as he was before, but also of things going back to the way they were, him with our parents and me on the opposite side. I was afraid that he would’ve hated me, and when the moment came I–I hesitated.”

For a moment the only sound was the soft crackling of the fire. Then there was a swish of cloth as Remus moved to take Sirius’s hand.

“So, you see, it’s all my fault. I got so caught up in my own fears that I ruined his chance. I killed him a second time, and then I left you as well. God.” His lips twitched into a mirthless smile as the realisation dawned on him. “My mother was right, I am a horrible person.”

“Don’t say ridiculous things just because you’re angry at yourself,” Remus said. “You’re not a bad person.”

“How can you say that after everything I’ve told you? After everything I’ve done?”

Remus squeezed his hand and leaned a little closer. “And what about what I have done? You must be terribly obtuse if you think I would have done it for a horrible person, when I’ve spent this last period trying to forget.”

“That is more an indication of your good character than mine,” said Sirius, looking down at their intertwined hands. It was grounding, to have Remus’s hand wrapped so tight around his own. He dared sweep a thumb over it, even as he fought back tears and whispered, “Shit, Remus. No wonder you pulled back, yesterday, when we... I can’t blame you.”

“That’s not why I pulled back,” Remus said, sounding both offended and worried. “For the last time, if I thought badly of you, I would’ve thrown you out all those times you came here, not spent my days with you. I wouldn’t have accepted the job. I didn’t even want to withdraw!”

“Then why did you?”

“Because–” he started and then stopped, looking at him with troubled eyes, and this time it was Sirius who held his hand tight. “I’ve been alone for so many years, Sirius, I’ve never had something like this, whatever this is, and I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t think it would’ve ever happened.”

“It is fine,” Sirius said, sweeping a finger over his hand, “that you stopped. It is fine if you’re not ready or if you don’t want me. I understand.”

“No, Sirius.” Remus bit his lip with a thoughtful expression, then said, “You’ve been honest with me and I’m trying to be honest with you. You’re not the only one with unsaid things.”

“What unsaid things?”

“When I was a child–” Remus sighed and pinched his nose. “My father, he used to work in a courthouse. When I was five years old, he got involved in a case of child murder. The man responsible for the deaths of two children, Grayback, was caught and brought in for questioning. My father was the only one in the committee that thought him guilty, and he spoke harshly against him. Then Grayback managed to escape. A few nights later, he came to our home and attacked me. Revenge against my father. That’s how I got this scar,” he said, tapping on the long mark on his face and neck, “and several others under my clothes. They’re the reason why I got worried when you put your hand under my shirt, the other night.”

“What? Remus, do you truly think I’d care about a few scars?”

“It’s not just a few scars.”

“Many scars, then, I still don’t care!”

“I don’t think you understand, Sirius.”

Remus let go of Sirius’s hand to grab the hem of his sweater, and, after one last moment of hesitation, he pulled it off in one smooth motion. Sirius brought one hand to his own throat as Remus’s words finally started to make sense. There, on his bare torso, were multiple scars, large and irregular, and, at the centre of his chest, the same intricate design that he had carved on Regulus that morning.

“After Grayback’s attack, my parents looked everywhere for help. Eventually, they met a man who had lost his younger sister years before. Dumbledore, that was his name. He’d had the same idea that my parents and you had and found a necromancer to bring her back. In the end, he’d been too afraid of the truth to go through with it, for his sister had lost her life in an incident he was involved in and he didn’t want to know the extent of his responsibility. From him, my parents learnt about Slughorn. After he brought me back, I became his apprentice, and that is how I learnt everything I know about alchemy and necromancy.”

Sirius stood up from the couch and went to stand by the fireplace with his back turned to Remus as he recounted his years with Slughorn and their encounter with Riddle’s emissaries. His voice was trembling a bit while he told him about his life, Riddle’s slaves, Slughorn’s death–how Remus was the one that found the room full of blood, and how he suspected his mentor to have only faked his death to run away–, his departure from necromancy. Sirius took it all in.

“When I say that things are different after a resurrection, even when it appears to be successful, I do so because I lived it on my skin. This constant feeling of being out of place. I shouldn’t be here, and I feel it every day, in every moment. It’s always nagging at me. It’s been decades, and it’s still there. And the fear of what other people might think of me. The self-hatred, the shame. And then there are more tangible side effects. I’m cold, all the time. No matter how many clothes I wear, how close I stand to a fire, how hot it is outside, I’m always cold. And the thing is, I don’t feel it. I don’t even shiver. There are so many things that I can’t feel, and they haunt me. They’re reminders that I don’t belong.”

Sirius turned towards Remus. He was still on the couch, still shirtless, but he wasn’t watching Sirius. His gaze was trained on the clothes on his thighs, and he was fiddling with a loose thread.

“Did you ever learn to live with it?” Sirius asked.

“It’s been a lonely life.”

“You holed up in here.”

“I had to lie low. I think Slughorn’s life made it pretty clear that this is the better option, and he wasn’t even like me. It’s easier to be alone when I am what I am.”

“What about me, then?” Sirius shrugged. “I’m here.”

“You are,” Remus murmured and then, after a moment, added, “now.”

Sirius walked up to Remus, moved his clothes out of his lap and leaned down to kiss him. When Remus reached up to entangle his hands in his hair, Sirius climbed on his lap, put a hand on the back of his neck and tried to pour everything he wanted to say into the kiss: that he was glad he’d found him, that he didn’t care about whatever thing was carved on his chest, and that he was not there _now_ , he was there and not going to leave.

“Tell me if it’s too much,” he said.

His free hand slipped down to Remus’s chest, and he let his fingers trace the triangles and circles and other symbols cicatrised on it. Remus was so cold, and it hurt to know why. But his skin was soft where Sirius laid his lips, trailing soft kisses on the scar on Remus’s face, following its course on his throat and down his chest, where it met the others. He placed his hands on Remus’s sides and pressed his mouth on the centre of the alchemical pattern. Above him, Remus let out a deep exhale and his chest rose. His heart was pounding hard under Sirius’s lips, where he could feel it.

He wrapped his arms around Remus and rested his head on his shoulder. He closed his eyes at the touch of Remus’s delicate fingers through his hair.

“He looked so much like you,” Remus said after a while. It was nothing more than a whisper, barely louder than the crackling logs.

“He did,” Sirius replied.

“It frightened me, when I opened the coffin.”

Sirius nodded, thinking back at the night at the cemetery and at Regulus’s body on the laboratory table.

“Are you angry with your parents? Because they brought you back?” Sirius asked. The question that troubled him was, _Do you think he would have hated me for it?_

Remus shifted under him. “I don’t resent my parents for what they did. In truth, that’s partly why I decided to help you: you reminded me of them. You all did it out of love.”

“I don’t even know why I did it. Love isn’t supposed to feel so egotistical.”

“I don’t know if you were being egotistical, but I know you were scared. So was I, and so was Regulus, I’m sure. Don’t punish yourself for being human.”

“Isn’t that what you did, hidden in this house and in your studies?”

“It is.” Remus moved his hand to Sirius’s upper arm and stroked it with his thumb. “I can’t promise you anything, but I hope that’s in the past.”

Sirius turned his head to bury his face in the crook of his neck, brushing his lips against his skin. He lifted one hand to bring it on Remus’s stomach and tapped there with a finger before mimicking the movement of Remus’s thumb on his arm and tracing light, vague shapes on him. And so maybe Remus’s arms were cold around Sirius, and his skin icy under his hands, but there was such warmth in his touch, and solace in being held while having the ugliest parts of himself displayed there for him and Remus to see.

“Remus?” he called and, when he was answered with a hum, asked. “Can I see him again?”

Remus moved to sit them up, pulled his clothes back on and got on his feet. “Come,” he said, holding out his hand for Sirius to take.

Like the parlour, nothing had changed in the laboratory since the morning. The body was still on the table, covered by the brown fabric, with marks of cut flesh and dried blood on his chest. The phials were in the same spot where Sirius had left them, uncapped. On the table, right above Regulus’s shoulder, was the knife, the flowers on its handle stained with blood. A faint scent of copper and chemistry stirred in the room.

Sirius reached out to touch his hand, holding his breath. They hadn’t touched since their last fight, when his skin was still warm and alive. He pressed a finger on his wrist, on the spot where his pulse had once been.

“We should take him back,” he said.

Remus squeezed his hand. “We will.”

Sirius gave one last glance at his brother’s eyes, green and foggy. Then he lifted his hand and closed them. “Thank you.”

*

It was already close to sunrise when Sirius threw the last shovelful of soil on Regulus’s grave. He patted on it with the spade then went to stand beside Remus, a few steps away, wiped his brow and let out a long sigh. A few early birds had started chirping, filling the silence of the cemetery with their faint songs. He glanced around, to all the graves that surrounded his brother’s: simple stone graves, turned black in some places by age and nature. Names and dates, and not much more.

“Does it hurt?” Sirius asked. “To die?”

The birds were the only sound for another moment, a long one, before Remus spoke. “It was a long time ago. Memories fade.”

“You should know, by this point, that you can be honest with me.”

“I do know,” Remus said. “And I am. I don’t remember the pain anymore. I remember the fear, and the cold. The darkness, but I do not know if it was my death or simply the night. I remember Grayback’s knife breaking my skin and sinking in my flesh, and I remember screaming because of it. It must have hurt.” He shrugged. “I can’t recall the sensation of it, though.”

Sirius let the silence fall again. Names and dates, and not much more. Stones that stood, cold and still and slowly degrading, facing the years, keeping each other company.

“It’s almost morning,” Sirius said, looking up at the sky. “We should go.”

Remus gave him a small smile and placed a hand on his back as they turned and left the grave behind.

*

Sat down at the desk, Sirius placed a white page in front of him and began to write.

_Dear James, dearest Lily,  
I have found the alchemist._

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't actually a fic about necromancy. It's a fic about the solace that can be found in other people despite everything and despite yourself.
> 
> Thanks for reading, have a marvellous day/night!


End file.
